What one must deplore, however, is the general mental inadequacy that is
paired with this spasmodic energy of scorn. Common sense is not the
highest of dramatic qualities, but a modicum of it would have made
Schiller's first heroine, to say the least, more interesting. She has no
power of initiative and seems made only to be duped. Her inability to
recognize her lover in the fourth act is a terrible strain upon one's
patience. Indeed the whole love-affair between her and Karl is utterly
un-human. What can one think, for example of a pair of ecstatically
faithful lovers to whom it has evidently never occurred to write to each
other? Here, if anywhere, one recalls Schiller's oft-quoted observation
that he had attempted in 'The Robbers' to depict human beings before he
had seen any.[28] Aside from his acquaintance with Franziska von
Hohenheim, and an occasional nearer view of the coy maidens of the
_ecole des demoiselles_, the female sex and the grand passion were for
him only bookish mysteries.

Of the subordinate outlaws there are several whose portraits are very
well drawn. Here Schiller was able to profit by the psychological
observations he had made upon his comrades in the academy. There were no
cutthroats there, but there were traits and exploits, animosities and
fidelities, which only needed to be heated in the poetic crucible in
order to befit the role of robbers in the Bohemian Forest. In particular
we may guess that the blatherskite Jew, Spiegelberg, with his swaggering
self-conceit and his bestial vulgarity, was copied to some extent from
life, though nothing definite is known of his original. Taken as a whole
the robbers form a picturesque company, each with his own character.
Shakspere would probably have been content to say 'first robber','second
robber', etc.; but for Schiller, accustomed to the pose of leadership
among his fellows, to company drill and to the weighing of men according